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The Story of Thanksgiving (updated)

“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it”.

– Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

MaxSpeak Summary: Among Puritan Christian fundamentalists, the Pilgrims were treacherous, murderous swine. The Pilgrims made a treaty with the indigenous people around Plymouth, until they had enough forces to wipe them out. This they later did with smallpox and guns, unless they were able to sell them into slavery, all for the greater glory of God.

Wait a minute. That wasn’t quite right. Let’s try it again. Here’s how it goes.

The Puritans in England were subjected to religious persecution, lo unto death. They were not allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas.’ They needed borders, because without borders you don’t have a country. But in order to have borders, you need some land to put the borders around. The Puritans tried to settle in the Netherlands, but the people there were crooked; they refused to exercise eminent domain, provide tax subsidies, or hand over land for free. The New World beckoned. It was a land without a people, first-class hotels, or golf courses, and they were a people without a land.

Upon settling around Plymouth, the first Puritans (Pilgrims) began to get along with the Wampanoag Nation. The Wampanoug were lovely people subject to aggression by immigrants from other Native American groups, who sent murderers and rapists and bad hombres instead of their best. Sad! The Wampanoag provided thousands, no millions of jobs for the Puritans; their alliance became an outpost of peace and freedom in the New World.

As more Puritans arrived, they required more lebensraum. The Wampanoag, like other indigenous peoples, lacked a modern system of property rights. They did not see fit to build fences, put up street signs, or trade in mortgage-backed securities. The Puritans remedied these defects of indigenous civilization. It just happened that the Puritans ended up owning all the property, and Native Americans themselves became classified as property.

Taking umbrage at this advance of Judeo-Christian civilization, the indigenous people were reduced to terrorism. Some were sufficiently maniacal as to sacrifice their own lives in order to murder innocent settlers. There was a virtual cult of death. Underlying this irrationality was a primitive religious belief system that celebrated exterminating one’s enemies, as well as the consumption of locoweed and psychedelic mushrooms. Nobody knew how bad they could get. In short, the natives hated America.

As a matter of self-defense, the Puritans were compelled to rise to the challenge of this war of civilizations; they had to get tough, by exterminating both the terrorists, their families, and the societies that nurtured them. There was no middle ground, believe me; you were with them or against them. Those Native Americans that were willing to live in peace were provided with alternative living arrangements under the protection of the new government. Sadly, they proved unequal to the rigors of modern society and eventually disappeared.

Today we celebrate Thanksgiving as a tribute to their memory, and to the invaluable assistance they unselfishly provided to the Christian conquest of America.

Now please pass the gravy, and have a Happy Thanksgiving, from all the MaxSpeak mispochah.